The American People Badly Underestimate Iraqi Death Toll

A new AP-Ipsos poll finds that Americans can accurately identify the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq, but badly miss the mark on the number of Iraqi civilians killed.

When the poll was conducted, the number of Americans killed was just over 3,100. Poll respondents guessed 3,000, on average. The number of Iraqis killed is a difficult question, but what we do know is that it's really, really high. From the AP story on the poll: "Iraqi civilian deaths are estimated at more than 54,000 and could be much higher; some unofficial estimates range into the hundreds of thousands. The U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq reports more than 34,000 deaths in 2006 alone."

What do Americans guess? 9,890. Yikes.

But apparently even that badly inaccurate number is too high for an increasingly war-weary country. "Whatever their understanding of the respective death tolls," writes the AP, "three-quarters of those polled said the numbers of both Americans and Iraqis who have been killed are 'unacceptable.'" For an explanation for why the American public doesn't know how many Iraqis have been killed, look no further than the Bush Administration, which was exposed as systematically undercounting Iraqi dead by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. Hit this link to read the obvious but damning allegation.